Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston

In Unfreedom, Hardesty seeks to move beyond the familiar dichotomies of slavery and freedom by examining slavery as part of a “continuum of unfreedom” in the early modern Atlantic world, grounding his analysis in the social and cultural history of colonial Boston. “In this hierarchical, inherently unfree society,” Hardesty observes, “slavery must be put in the context of a larger Atlantic world characterized by a culture of dependence” (2). Mid-eighteenth-century Boston, a bustling provincial seaport, was a world of nested hierarchies headed by an unseen God, a distant king, and an array of local elites. It was also a world of household governance in which husbands ruled over wives; parents ruled over children; and “masters” ruled over apprentices, bound servants, and slaves. At the center of Hardesty’s analysis is a specific conception of freedom, independence, and rights. Eighteenth-century Bostonians, he argues, did not believe in “universal” human rights; rather,...